


Crossed Wires

by ssleif



Category: Much Ado About Nothing (2012)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Polyamory Negotiations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:28:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21853717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssleif/pseuds/ssleif
Summary: Together once more in Messina for the Birth of Claudio and Hero's child, our favorite motley trio has an oppourtunity to work some things out.
Relationships: Beatrice/Benedick (Much Ado About Nothing), Beatrice/Benedick/Don Pedro (Much Ado About Nothing), Beatrice/Don Pedro (Much Ado About Nothing), Benedick/Don Pedro (Much Ado About Nothing)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 43
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Crossed Wires

**Author's Note:**

  * For [twistedchick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedchick/gifts).



At first, Don Pedro finds it hard to be in such proximity to his happy friends. He is undeniably envious of the easy rapport they seem to have, after a year of marriage. He misses the time he’d had with Benedick, their intimacy and support, prolific letters are poor substitute… and he finds he still finds Beatrice to be beautiful and compelling. HER prolific letters had not served to cool and temper his ardour, as he hoped hearing of her marital bliss might. Rather, over the past year, they have taken a decided turn for the impropitious. He hadn’t said anything to Benedick, or stopped responding to Beatrice (or requested that she tame the letters), instead convincing himself that he has been mistaken about Beatrice’s intentions and feelings before, and if he is mistaken, his friends are two of the most volatile people he’s ever been privileged to know— were he to offend or piss either of them off, there was equal chance that they would freeze him out so coldly he’d get frostbite, or eviscerate him with wit to point of abject humiliation.

Even in light of the strange situation, letters that creep closer and closer to intimacies and presumptions no woman would normally want to be caught making outside of her marriage… when the oppourtunity presented itself to take a short leave and reconnect with his friends, he jumped on it. He hopes his good friend is doing all he can to satisfy his new friend, and if that is not the case… well. He will just have to see.

Hero is heavily pregnant, and has decided to give birth in her mother’s home, and Beatrice and Benedick have also repaired to Messina and the house of Leonato to be with her, and support her and Claudio. Claudio, who had still been stationed with Don Pedro, takes his leave, and Don Pedro, girding his loins, takes a short leave as well.

The reunion is warm and joyous at first, rapport easy to come by, and everyone full of fresh stories and tall tales, thrilled just to be near to each other again, to be able to speak at a moment’s notice. But, as they settle into a routine, and Hero’s child still doesn’t come, Benedick spends more time at his desk, and Don Pedro spends more time at his, and gradually his interactions with Beatrice… start to cross lines. She comes to him while he has been working, with a cup of tea, or a glass of wine, chooses to sit near him at meals more often than not, invites herself into his space, his office, his room, his balcony.

He never turns her down.

Finally, it comes to a head one evening when, in an attempt to put a little space between them and decline a nightcap, he protested a headache and she, with a ridiculous braying giggle, offers her fingers for his service and relief.

Her fingers in his hair, on his skin, sliding back and forth across his temples, scratching along the crown of his head… send shivers down his spine. They migrate a little lower, and a little lower, hitting the muscles at the base of his skull, and then down his neck, at the juncture of shoulder, digging in, releasing tension he didn’t even know he was carrying. He suppresses the urge to moan in pleasure— and jerks away, horrified that he has let himself… what? Take Beatrice up on her offer? But whatever her motivations, whatever IS on offer, he cannot, in good conscience, do anything that might compromise her honor, or betray his friend (and he is boggling, internally, at the idea that she is WILLING to compromise her honor. Maybe, for all her wit and charm, maybe she ISN’T the honorable person he thought she was. Maybe—)

“Sir,” she says, her tone contrite and surprised, just as when he proposed, and he decides to let her explain. 

“What… milady Beatrice, I have resisted any form of presumpiton… but what is this? What is the nature of the relationship you wish to with me? And does your husband and our mutual friend know what you’ve been doing?”

“Sir, I did not mean to cause offence or discomfort. I value our friendship greatly,”

(ah, friendship. He begins to back down…)

“But I have found myself dwelling on the though of your loneliness… and your proposal.”.

(What… what even was this?)

“Milady. I admit, I am in a state of confusion. Surely you are not… not suggesting…” 

“That I take you upon on your offer? Even if it should still stand, I am married sir.”

“I know, and to my greatest friend aside from yourself.”

“Just so, sir. But, forgive me if I overstep or presume wrongly, but I feel our connection and compatibility have only persisted since then and grown stronger. I was hasty in my rejection of you, so surprised was I by it, and so opposed at that time to the idea of marrying anyone. If I could go back…”

Beatrice bit her lip, and Don Pedro was struck by twin bolts of lust and derision.

“You would what, throw over my bosom companion for me? Madam, I’m not so sure that I had the full estimation of your character.”

He was beginning to get worked up.

“If you think I could be happy taking my friend’s dearest heart from him, humiliating him in public… if you think that kind of trechery, betrayal, and scandal is the best way to begin a relationship, then I am afraid I was much mistaken indeed. Unless he has harmed you in some way…”

And to his surprise, Beatrice burst out laughing.

Humiliated, and even angrier, he tried to come up with a response to this non-sequitor, tried to think how to throw her out of his rooms, tried to think how on earth he was ever to look Benedick in the eye again after this, how he could tell him about it, for surely he had to. As she laughed, he was working himself up into quite a fury and sadness. Why should she, learning she had desires all of a sudden too late, allow petty fleeting wants to destroy as many lives, marriages, and reputations as this had the potential to destroy?

Was she put up to this? That would almost make more sense, then that she should spontaneously take leave of her sense and initiate this foolishness. 

Finally, she stopped laughing, clutching her stomach and pressing a hand just under her (fantastic) breast, gasping for composure through the tears.

“I’m sorry milord! I didn’t mean to… I can see where you would… but of course. No. You are a good man, an honorable one. That is part of why we chose to make this overture.”

(We?)

“We?”

“Of course. My dear Benedick would have joined me for this conversation, save that he still had work to be done this evening, and also that, well…”

She looked unsure for the first time that evening.

Don Pedro was terribly spun about.

“Well what?”

“Well, we knew you had no issue of compatibility with him, but…”

Don Pedro’s mind suddenly put some things together, flashing to friendly hands exchanged in the post battle-high, under the cover of night in the barracks, an intense regard that none-the-less went only so far by definition. The unspoken “so far” being “up to the bonds of matrimony”. 

And Beatrice was still talking, still floating this… impossible scheme? This fever dream.

“But though you had once perhaps proposed to me, that needn’t mean that you favored me then, or still favor me now, with the same eye you once leant Benedick, the same eye I have come to bear for you. Nor indeed did it mean that, for any amount of support or companionship you might be lacking, you should want to invite the complexity this would bring, or even desire to spread your interest twice. Many do not. Indeed, those that do are the minority.

“But we gambled that you were a true enough friend that if we asked, and you declined, our various correspondences and such would be able to resume with little wound.

“And if you did accept…”

His brain was clearing, slowly, and finally starting to believe what he was hearing.

“Milady. Are you… I’m not certain I am understanding you fully, and I would hate to misstep and imply…”

Beatrice squared her shoulders, donned the familiar determined countenance she’d worn throughout the debacle of the last time they were all together, and pronounced:

“That we would both like to bed you, in sequence, and together?”

“Yes. …that.”

“Well, I should hope there’d be a bit more preceding that, and a great deal more to follow. But yes. That is the scandalous heart of the mater.”

He… he’d rarely before been as speechless. Maybe for a moment, as he shook off the humiliation of her initial rejection of him the year prior….

“How… if we… if we did… how would it… would we…”

“How would it work milord? Well, first I would think I should like to kiss you, and then once those objections have been stopped, proceed onward.”

His face was aflame and he was still too thrown to even feel ashamed of that.

“But if you mean, how would such an ongoing relationship proceed? Well, that would very likely be up to milord’s discretion.”

He said nothing, but he didn’t resist when she came closer to him again, shoved some of his parchment and ink to the side, and sat unceremoniously atop his desk, head above his, but making firm eye contact.

“In truth, milord, it is this: Benedick cares for you. I also care for you. We intuit that you are over-worked and under-appreciated, and we should like to care for you together. In the best of all possible worlds, we would support you, talk with you, help you bear your burdens… and then help you release them when you came home, to us, to our bed. In the instances where you, either of you, go abroad, I would remain likely, tending whatever needed tending, finding that to be an acceptable exchange for the speed with which you would return, and the… intensity you would aspire to when thanking me for my pains.”

She grinned a wicked grin, and then let it soften. Reaching out to his head once more, petting through his hair, she finally concluded:

“We would love you, milord, if you would let us.”

“If you will not,” came another voice form the doorway, startling them both, “We will likely love you anyway, but it will be a much more distant, pining, and embarrassing thing.”

Benedick drew close to them, sliding an arm around Beatrice’s waist, and sliding the opposite hand onto the ball of Don Pedro’s shoulder.

“So it would be for the best that you agree to my Beatrice’s superior intellect and allow us to cherish you up close.”

Benedick leaned to this side and kissed Beatrice, and intense an practiced thing it was clear she could feel all the way to her toes. And just as Don Pedro started to get uncomfortable and wonder what it was he was supposed to be doing, the two broke apart, grinning at each other, and immediately rounded on him, Beatrice leaning in and giving him the barest moment to decide whether to accept or reject her before. Kissing him.

It’s warm and wet, and he knows the taste well enough to catch the flavor of Benedick’s mouth in hers, and her hair slides around them, and he can smell spice and citrus—

And she breakes the kiss, pulling back, and Benedick takes her place, also leaning down, as she watches hungrily.

After several long minutes of passing each other back and forth, his friends finally pull back, putting a temporary halt on the activity.

“Well sir, “ said Benedick, voice gone smoother and lower than before, “what will it be?”

Don Pedro panted a moment, moderately out of breath from sharing it with his prospective new lovers.

“Well, my dear Benedick, I cannot make you my prince, and likely cannot make Beatrice my princessa at this time, but until such time as things change, or you, or you,” He turned his head to include Beatrice in the comment, “or I am no longer interested… care to retire to my rooms for the night?”

Benedick beamed with satisfaction.

“I thought you’d never ask, sir.”

And a wink, a smack of the lips to Don Pedro’s cheek, and a pinch to Beatrice’s rear, Benedick swanned into the bedroom.

“Milord,” Beatrice said, wicked grin in place, but eyes shining with sincere joy and anticipation. She slid off the desk inelegantly, pulled her blouse back into place (a pity), and held out a hand her to him.

“Milday,” he breathed in wonder, taking her hand and allowing himself to get pulled along behind her.

_fin_

PS: They were, naturally, interrupted by the arrival of Hero and Claudio’s child and Beatrice spent the next 16 hours at her cousin’s bedside so that was that for a while.

PPS: The first time they all slept together, nothing at all worldly happened beyond sleep. She slept like a dead thing, save for the snoring, and Benedick and Don Pedro looked on fondly and marveled at their fortune.

PPPS: But they did eventually consummate this new relationship, and Don Pedro experienced the closest thing to holiness he’d even felt.

PPPPS: And he began, with renewed strength and zeal for life, to plan. Were it in his power, and he was certain he would make it be, he would be keeping this un-looked-for, un-deserved gift, as long as he possibly could. They would never want, and never have cause to doubt, so long as there was strength of body or policy of mind left in him to make it so.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope it worked for you! I can never find it in my heart to let any one of the three be truly unhappy for long, so hopefully DP simply considering that Beatrice was contemplating ditching Benedick was sufficient!
> 
> Have an excellent holiday!


End file.
